


we follow the same guiding light (passing like ships in the night)

by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid



Series: revengers AU: thanos doesn't show up immediately and ruin everything [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU: Thanos doesn't show up immediately to ruin everything, Could Be Read as Pre-Relationship, Drinking & Talking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Late Night Conversations, Mostly Gen, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Thorsweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 04:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17615189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid/pseuds/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid
Summary: There's just something to be said for those quiet moments in the middle of the night. Even when you're in space and "night" is a bit of a relative concept.[ Based on the Thorsweek promptGrief]





	we follow the same guiding light (passing like ships in the night)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a completed oneshot, originally posted in a multi-chapter "series of oneshots" called _between here and the edge of the universe_. The idea of smushing a bunch of oneshots into one work has bugged me since I posted it, so I'm reworking my formatting. If you've already read this — welcome back! If you left comments there, don't worry, your comments will live on forever in my heart and in my inbox. ♥
> 
> This takes place after Ragnarok, assuming a time gap between the destruction of Asgard and the arrival of Thanos, _or_ in some wonderful alternate universe where Thanos doesn't exist. Reader's choice.

There are no sunsets in space.

No sunsets or sunrises, no singing of birds to signal the start of a new day, no waning of the moons. There’s nothing but the onboard computer systems to track the passage of time, a steady march of numbers counting exactly how long the whole of Asgard has been refugees, seconds and hours and days in which the Universe has stubbornly persisted on even while their Realm remains a cloud of dust in their wake, dispersing slowly into the cosmos.

It was Heimdall who first suggested altering the ship’s lighting to operate on a cycle. He had sensed, somehow, that the lost and grieving people on board all desperately needed to return to some semblance of normalcy. And perhaps it was Heimdall that needed it, too, Thor thinks, though he would never have said so.

Fourteen hours at full brightness, ten hours dimmed by half, then repeat. If nothing else, it provides a period of quiet at least once a day, and at times like these Thor feels he ought to count himself lucky for small miracles.

At times like these, though, he should  _also_ probably be asleep.

Instead he sits upon one of the many blinking consoles in the engine room with a mug sitting between his knees, its contents long since forgotten as he gazes up through the wide, domed glass ceiling that stands between him and… some galaxy he doesn’t recognize. Constellations he’s never seen, unfamiliar planets just visible as colorful blips in the distance.

They are already far, far from home.

And it’s like this, alone in the engine room in the middle of their artificial night, that the Valkyrie finds him.

She walks with a warrior's silent grace, even as her steps swagger a bit from the drink perpetually buzzing through her bloodstream. Thor doesn't even notice her approach until she's circled the little console on which he's made his seat, and without waiting for an invitation — not that he wouldn’t have given one — she hops up onto it to sit beside him. Thor’s own toes barely graze the floor; hers don’t touch it at all, her legs idly swinging, heels tapping the console with a gentle rhythm. A bottle of some amber colored liquor sits cradled between her palms.

“Your Majesty,” she says by way of greeting.

He nods. “Noble Valkyrie.”

She snorts without humor. “Mocking me now, are you?”

At that, Thor turns to look at her with a raised eyebrow. She’s taken to peering up at the stars along with him, but she catches his eye and turns just slightly to meet his gaze. Hard and unyielding as always, as though she’s daring him to agree.

“Never,” Thor tells her. “I speak nothing but the truth.” He shrugs, returning to his stargazing. “Of course, if I knew your name, rest assured that's how I would call you. But as it stands…”

He drops the subject there, though, already well aware that she won’t take the bait. It is not the first time he’s alluded to the fact that she has yet to divulge her name to him — or, indeed, to anyone on the ship. She has brushed it off every single time, and he knows this time will be no different.

They sit in silence for a moment, simply indulging in the rare quiet, content in each other's company.

After a bit, she places her bottle down on the console and reaches instead for the mug that's still sitting between his knees, plucking it up and giving it a curious sniff. She seems to decide it's worth trying, because she brings the mug to her lips to take a sip.

There’s an almost imperceptibly quiet gagging noise as she tastes it. Her nose wrinkles, and she swirls the mug around while eyeing it down like it's insulted her.

Thor smiles. “It tastes better when it's warm.”

“Well it can’t taste much worse, can it?” she asks, placing the mug down on the console between them. “What  _is_ it?”

“I'm not sure, to be honest. It came from a packet in the food stores,” he tells her. “It promised caffeine in large quantities, so I had imagined it might taste like coffee.”

“Coffee?”

“Midgardian drink,” Thor explains. “Very delicious when prepared properly.”

“Well,” she says, popping the cap off her own drink and taking a gulp to wash down the taste of his. She swipes the back of her hand over her mouth and says, “Sorry you got your hopes up, then.”

“It's alright,” he says with a shrug. “It gave the promised caffeine, anyway.”

Valkyrie gives a thoughtful hum. “Suppose that's why you're still up while everyone else is sleeping, then?”

Thor sends her a sideways glance. “Not everyone.”

“I don't count.”

He frowns, brow creasing, and grabs the mug with only his fingertips on its rim, spinning it slowly in place to give his hands something to do. Without looking up at her he says, “Of course you count.”

She lets out a huff. “You're avoiding the question, Your Majesty.”

“Did you ask one?”

He looks up to find that she’s shot him a look in response, a halfhearted sort of glare, and he relents with a sigh.

“There's work to be done,” he says, looking away and — for the fifth or sixth time in the last hour — running through the list in his head. “Mainly inventory, supply lists, organization of our stores. There are nearby planets I’ll need to research, places we'll be passing on our route, people that might be open to diplomacy, might offer aid… Oh, and the engine needed attention, too, but I've already seen to that.”

He nods toward the engine block, where a loose bit of wiring had been emitting sparks every time the temperature got too high. Thor has had precious little experience in  _suppressing_ bolts of lightning, but he managed well enough with some electrical tape from the supply closet and some careful rewiring.

“I just… needed a moment, I suppose,” he admits, and his shoulders sag as he lets out a heavy sigh, “before moving on to the rest.”

Again Valkyrie gives a thoughtful hum. “Y’know, I’ve never lived on a spaceship before now, so I might be ill-informed,” she says, feigning nonchalance, “but is that usually how things are run? One person shouldering all of the responsibilities while the rest of the ship’s inhabitants sleep the night away?”

Thor smiles. “If you’re going to try convincing me to leave some of those jobs for the people, I’m afraid I’m not so easily swayed. And you won’t be the first, anyway,” he tells her. “Loki’s already argued the point. Twice.”

 _“Has_ he?”

“Not in so many words,” Thor says. “But yes. I think he worries I’ll overexert myself.”

Valkyrie snorts, taking a sip of her drink. “I never considered your brother the worrying type.”

“You wouldn’t, no. Not if he didn’t want you to,” Thor says. “I wouldn’t have, either, to be honest. But after—” he pauses, hesitates, as always stumbling over the words, stumbling over the bluntness of it, “—after everything, I think… I don’t know, I just think something’s changed in him.”

“That so.”

He chews on his cheek, nodding, mulling over his words. “My brother has never been particularly amenable to change, nor sentiment, but lately he hasn’t been given much of a choice. Our mother’s gone, our father, our home, and now… I’m all he’s got left. I think it’s finally knocked some sense into him.”

As he speaks, his eyes remain fixed on the cosmos. A comet streaks its delicate white line through the dark.

He admits with a sigh, “Feels naive, saying it aloud, though.”

And, of course, if Loki ever  _heard_ him say any of that aloud —

Well, he’d probably sink a six-inch dagger between Thor’s shoulder blades. Just to prove him wrong, just to make a point.

Valkyrie takes another swig from her bottle. Eventually, she says, “I’m not sure it’s naive. Wishful thinking, maybe. But if you’re aware enough to call it naivety, I think, by definition, it’s not naivety.”

“That’s… very wise.”

“Mind, I still think you give him a bit more credit than he deserves.”

Thor smiles at that — she’s certainly not wrong, he’s always seen more in his little brother than anyone else ever did — but he shrugs.

“I don’t know how else to be,” he answers truthfully. He can’t help it. Ever since his banishment all those years ago, ever since Midgard, he can’t help hoping for the best in people, hoping that the darkness in them will not be enough to overshadow the light. Even aside from Loki. And now, after Hela’s return, after his father’s secrets were forcibly unveiled before his eyes — well, now it only feels all the more important that he holds fast to that belief.

Then, because it’s true and he has no reason to be proud when it’s the middle of the night and the Valkyrie is not likely to judge him for it, he adds, “He’s all I’ve got left, too.”

“Hmm. Guess that’s fair.”

She lifts her bottle and tilts it toward him in a wordless offer. He takes it, his thumb brushing over the back of her hand for the briefest of seconds, and he takes a sip. Instantly he wonders if he’s just taken a gulp of engine grease. It sears his throat and tickles his lungs with tongues of flame on its way down, but he hides the urge to cringe well enough and hands it back to her with a grateful smile.

He returns his gaze to the stars, once again marveling at how different the constellations seem. None of what he might have seen from Asgard remains, none of the familiar stars and distant planets, because Asgard itself no longer remains.

By  _his_ actions. And by his father’s actions, too.

He still has such difficulty believing it. He was there, he  _saw_ it, from its beginning straight through to its end — his father admitting Hela’s very existence and his part in hiding her away, the murals of war and conquest, the final burst of Asgard itself into trillions of fine white specks against the velvet blackness of space. He bore witness to every moment.

Somehow, though, that doesn’t make it feel any more real. That doesn’t help him wrap his  _mind_ around it.

And then, with his heart thudding heavily behind his sternum, he says before he can talk himself out of it, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Valkyrie asks, bottle half raised for a sip. “For what?”

Thor sighs, and he looks down at his hands. He wrings them together, presses the thumb of his right hand into the palm of his left, cracks a knuckle. This is not a subject he’s wanted to breach. It’s not a subject he believes  _she’ll_ want him to breach. But it needs to be said. He’ll drop it the moment she asks, but he  _needs_ to say it, needs to get the words out in the open.

She deserves that much.

“I know I already thanked you for coming back to Asgard with us,” Thor says, “and no matter how many times I say it, it will never be enough. The lives you saved, the victory you made possible — I’m eternally grateful for it. But… I’m sorry you had to return home after so many years only to see it…” he trails off, waves a hand vaguely in front of him, “... to see it destroyed. I’ve spent these past few days mourning all we’ve lost, but you’ve lost more than any of us. And I’m sorry I had a hand in it.”

To his surprise, Valkyrie meets his heartfelt apology with a laugh. It’s a little huff of a laugh, but it’s a laugh all the same. He looks up at her to find her shaking her head with a faint smile.

“Your Majesty,” she says. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. I’d already considered Asgard lost a long, long time ago. And when you told me Hela was back, I knew it truly  _was_ lost, to everyone, not just to me. It was only a matter of time.” She shrugs. “Only difference is I had made my peace with it years in advance.”

Thor watches her, remembering what she told him when he first asked her to return to Asgard with him, the way her voice had just barely cracked.

_He sent the Valkyrie in to fight her back._

_It cost me everything._

The haunted look she’d worn then is still there, now, in the shadows of the carefully sardonic twist of her lips, the faraway glaze in her eyes.

“Had you?” he asks.

At that, all traces of mirth leave her face. Ice sharpens her gaze, and she shoots a genuine glare in his direction. “Watch it.”

Thor nods. “Of course. I won’t pry, Lady Valkyrie. You have my word on that,” he says, staring down at his hands once more to avoid her scrutinizing gaze, pressing his thumb a bit harder into his palm. “But it’s important that I tell you I’m sorry for that, too. I truly am.”

There’s a moment in which she says nothing to that. In his peripheral he sees her lift the bottle for another sip, eyes directed straight ahead at nothing. Her hands are as steady as ever, but there’s the faintest tremor to her voice when she finally speaks.

“And why would  _you_ feel the need to apologize for it?”

He hesitates. That’s fair, he supposes. It’s certainly true that he, personally, had no part in it, wasn’t even  _born_ when Odin sent the Valkyrior in to fight a battle they were destined to lose, a battle that shouldn’t have needed to be fought in the first place. But…

“Because I’m certain no one else has,” he answers at length. “And that’s not… It’s not right. My family is the reason you lost yours. I know some fraction of that pain, now, and I’m…” He pauses, sighs. Though it feels horribly inadequate, there really is no other way he can think to put it except, “I’m sorry.”

Again a moment passes without a response from her. Not that he expected one, exactly.

But then another moment passes, and another, and finally Thor has to look away from his hands, has to look at her, to get some inkling of what she’s feeling and how his words have affected her. If they’ve affected her at all.

She’s peering up through the window again, eyes searching the cosmos. There’s no telltale shine in her eyes, no buildup of tears that Thor can see, but her throat bobs just slightly as she gulps.

“A formal apology from the King of Asgard,” she quietly remarks, without tearing her gaze away from the stars. She gulps again, raises an eyebrow. “Never expected I’d get that. Not in a million years.”

“Well… yes, and no,” Thor corrects. “It is a formal apology from the King of Asgard, technically. But it’s also just—” He shrugs, returns to looking down at his hands. “A genuine one. From a friend.”

 _I hope,_ he thinks but doesn’t say. It feels all too likely that she’ll immediately rebuff him, that she’ll respond with,  _We’re not friends, Your Majesty. You’re the King and I’m a Valkyrie, and a disgraced one, at that._ He can practically hear it, hear every single word of it in her voice.

But she surprises him.

Valkyrie takes a breath, nods, and adds, “Never expected I’d get that, either.”

When he looks up at her he can see the far-off look in her eyes, the way she gazes up at the stars without really seeing them, and he  _knows_ that look. He knows it intimately, now, thanks to recent events. He knows she must be thinking of the rest of the Valkyrior, of all that she’s lost, of the years spent hiding away and drinking and fighting to try and dull the heartache of it.

And if she were anyone else —  _anyone_ else at all, Bruce or Loki or Heimdall or even Korg or any of the other Asgardians on board, if she were Steve or Stark or Natasha or Clint — he would put an arm around her now, give her a squeeze, say something sentimental and sincere.

Something stops him, though.

Nerves, maybe. And God, is  _that_  ever something he is completely unaccustomed to feeling.

He imagines he’ll learn to live with it, though, and gladly, if she sticks around.

“Well,” Thor says, gently nudging her with his upper arm, “you have it.”

She nods again, chewing on her cheek and still staring up at the stars. Again her throat bobs with a gulp. The bottle in her hands seems nearly forgotten, her thumb absently picking at the Sakaaran label. Condensation has ruined the adhesive; she’s already nearly removed the entire label without realizing it.

This time, when she takes in a slow breath, it sounds like she’s gathering her resolve, steadying her voice. Her arms tense for the briefest of moments.

She closes her eyes and tells him, “Brunnhilde.”

Thor blinks, staring wide-eyed at her.

Does she mean…?

“My name was—” she says, confirming it, and she opens her eyes to the cosmos and corrects herself, “— _is_ Brunnhilde.”

And already his mind is whirring, turning through every legend of the Valkyries that he’s ever read, every story he’s heard spoken at campfires and over dinner tables. He has pored through the stories, soaked up every tale, and he knows that name instantly —  _so many_ of the legends involved the renowned warrior Brunnhilde and the valiant battles she fought alongside the rest of the Valkyrior. Those stories were what inspired him as a child, stories that had him running around his bedchamber with a blanket tied at his throat before he’d ever donned a cape, ceaselessly bothering Loki to participate in his games, both of them using anything they had on hand to act as fake swords as they proceeded to beat the sense out of each other.

He reins that in, though. This is not about the legends, he knows. This is far, far more personal than any of that.

She hasn’t said anything else, hasn’t looked at him, hasn’t so much as glanced away from the window above.

Thor asks, “Is that how you’d like to be called?”

And Brunnhilde, the renowned Valkyrie of legend, opens her mouth to answer, and falters. She bites her lip. The Sakaaran label comes fully away from the bottle, and she rolls it up in her palm, twists it between her fingers.

“Not… not yet, no,” she answers. “Eventually. Maybe. It’s just that… the last person to call me that, she—”

Her voice catches, and she shakes her head as if shooing off a particularly bothersome thought, casting her eyes down to regard the ruined label sitting as a crumpled lump in her hand. Her shoulders rise in a gentle swell as she forces herself to take in another slow and steady breath. Thor gets the distinct feeling that the  _she_ in question was more than just another member of the Valkyrior, and he wonders if this is the first time she’s spoken of her to anyone else, the first time in — years, for her, and  _thousands_ of years to everyone outside of Sakaar.

“Valkyrie it is, then,” Thor says. When she glances up at him, he offers a gentle smile and adds, “Val, for short?”

 _Ah,_ he thinks,  _success._ She lets out a huff that’s almost a laugh, just the slightest upturn of one corner of her lips, and she shakes her head and turns her gaze back up to the stars.

“Sure,” she says, bringing the bottle up to her lips for another sip, but then she seems to think better of it. Instead she hands the bottle over to him in a second silent offer. He takes it again, endures the burn of the strong Sakaaran drink without so much as a wince, and hands it back to her. Then, quietly, she adds, “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

He smiles at that, following her gaze up to the window and all its unfamiliar constellations, the strange galaxies and unknown planets. Soon, he’ll have to get up from this console and get to work on the countless jobs awaiting his attention. Soon, he’ll have to do some research, scope out some of those nearby planets, check and double-check the engines and the navigation systems, take stock of all their inventory.

Soon. For now, though, he settles into a comfortable silence beside the Valkyrie —  _Val,_ he thinks, testing out the way the nickname sounds,  _Val_ — and indulges in the quiet, in the view, and in the company.

“You’re very welcome, Noble Valkyrie.”


End file.
